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Clinton Sharpens Her Attack on Obama

Striking a harsher new tone as she embarks on a two-week stretch that could revive or break her White House hopes, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton attacked Senator Barack Obama as callow and unprepared to lead.

“It is time to get real,” she said. “To get real about how we actually win this election and get real about the challenges facing America. It’s time we moved from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions.”

It is a familiar theme, but delivered with fresh intensity after two crushing defeats in Wisconsin and Hawaii on Tuesday and with critical contests in Ohio and Texas looming in two weeks.

Mrs. Clinton spent Wednesday morning in New York raising money before flying to Texas to campaign for that state’s crucial March 4 primary. Votes in Texas and Ohio, along with Rhode Island and Vermont, go to the polls that day in contests that Democratic strategists say Mrs. Clinton must win if she is to have any hope of capturing the nomination.

With losses on Tuesday in Wisconsin and Hawaii by broad margins across nearly every voter group, Mrs. Clinton has now lost 10 contests in a row to Mr. Obama since splitting votes and delegates with him on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.

Mr. Obama now has a widening lead in delegates that Mrs. Clinton will not be able to overcome without very large margins of victory in Texas and Ohio and without a large majority of uncommitted superdelegates breaking her way.

With those stakes in mind, Mrs. Clinton stepped up her attempts to undermine her surging opponent. She contrasted her health care and home foreclosure plans to those of Mr. Obama. She said he offered weak solutions wrapped in gauzy promises.

“I am not running for president to put Band-Aids on our problems. I am running to solve them,” she said. The American people, she added, “need a president ready on Day One to be commander in chief of the United States military. They need a president ready to manage our economy and ready to beat the republicans in November.

“I will be that candidate and I will be that president,” she concluded. Mr. Obama, she said, would need “on-the-job training” before he is ready to take on the burdens of the presidency.

Mrs. Clinton faces a narrow window in which to recast her candidacy and redefine her opponent, who has managed to peel away essential elements of the constituencies that helped her win in California, New Jersey and several other states in earlier contests: women, white men, union members, lower-income voters and those with a high school education or less.

She repeated earlier attacks from her campaign for Mr. Obama’s voting “present” on a number of issues while he was a member of the Illinois state senate and for meeting privately with Illinois utility executives about nuclear safety issues.

“You cannot achieve the kind of changes we want by voting present on controversial issues or by meeting behind closed doors with corporate interests to water down legislation or by caving in when pressure mounts,” Mrs.Clinton said. “The American people deserve better than that.”

She assailed Mr. Obama for leading a movement, not a political candidacy, and peddling dreams rather than concrete policies.

“Others might be joining a movement, but I’m joining you on the night shift and the day shift,” she said, an echo of a new television spot airing in Ohio called “Night Shift.”

“We need to keep dreaming.,” she added. “Dreaming keeps us hopeful. Without dreams we can’t aspire to be great, but without action we cannot turn those dreams into reality.”

“Clinton campaign officials have admitted being ill prepared for the series of contests”…….Isn’t it neat how one can campaign on experience and then show a lack of preparation? And isn’t it neat how one can then follow that with a critique of the opponents use of someone else’s words while using the opponents words? The Clintons make me sick. Stick a fork in em’.

It’s funny to watch Hillary project her own shortcomings on Barack while she’s catering to blue collar and union workers. Hillary is the one who gave away 4 million tech jobs to India for profit. It was Hillary who met behind close doors with Bill Gates to assure him she’d fight for unlimited H1B visas to allow foreign workers to come to this country and displace working Americans. As far as her voting record, the FISA bill is very important to many Americans. She didn’t vote, and Barack DID vote against giving the telecommunications immunity so there can be an investigation into who in the Whitehouse authorized it. John Edwards probably won’t endorse anyone at this point because of Hillary’s vindictiveness. He would make an excellent AG and would hopefully hold the Bush administration accountable for its attack on our constitution.

The problem now is that the more negative she gets, the more talking points she provides to McCain. I can see his ads now – Hillary Clinton’s view of Barack Obama. I feel very bad for her. She has planned to be President for a long time and I am sure that she cannot believe that this has happened. The problem is that her true colors are showing. Her main concern should be that a democrate gets elected in November and if she cannot be that candidate, then she should do nothing to help the other side. I don’t mean that she should give up, but going negative is not the right answer if the Dems want the White House. I will be really interested to see what she does tommorrow night in the debate. If she goes on the attack and he remains cool – then I think she will come out looking very bad.

You always seem to frame Clinton in the most positive light – “It is a familiar theme, but delivered with fresh intensity” is a very nice way to say that she using the same old argument that has yet to work. Will others characterize “fresh intensity” differently? perhaps as just intensity (without the word “fresh”)or urgency or even desperation?
Is the NYT afraid the Clintons will punish them if they do not add positive modifiers such as “fresh” or is your editiorial board opinion (her endorsement) seeping into your reporting?

If Senator Clinton and her campaign staff really want to hurt the campaign of Senator Obama why do they not cast a close look over his donors? Senator Obama’s campaign brags that he attracts small donors. However, the records filed with the Federal Elections Commission do NOT list an employer for a full 35.1% of the donors nor any other means of establishing that these are bona fide small donors (SS number etc). This means that these supposedly small donors are NOT transparent. (A note must be made in fairness that 7.8% of Senator Clinton’s donors and 23.1% of Senator McCain’s donors also fail to state an employer. Congressman Paul on the other hand only has .004% of his donors failing to provide verifiable means of establishing that they are really who they say they are). 35.1% is a very large number when the amounts raised by Senator Obama’s campaign finance committee is taken into account. Senator Obama has also backtracked on his promise to accept Federal Funding, which would bring his entire donor list under scrutiny and limit the amount of money he can spend on his campaign. The records are easily accessed as public information at the Federal Election Commission. Perhaps Senator Clinton should stop wasting her time on trivia (plagerism etc) and go after the meat.

How does Clinton continue to sustain her “experience” argument in light of her poor performance during the last 10 contests? David Gergen referred last night to her campaign’s decision to ignore caucus states and other smaller primary states in favor, instead, of populous, delegate-rich states as tantamount to “political malpractice.” I have to believe there’s a pretty big disconnect for voters when they hear Hillary continue to pitch her “experience” argument in the wake of defeat after defeat after defeat…

I respect Hillary and if Barack were not around I would be OK with her. However, this just sounds like more of the Clinton family tradition of saying whatever they think people want to hear.

Barack is different in that his message is consistent and positive even after people told him ‘he had to attack’ earlier in the season.

Hillary’s harping on health care is interesting. Her plan is different in that it would force people to buy care, even to the point of garnishing wages she’s mentioned previously (sorry, no source) and that actually worries me.

The largest proportion of growth in Emergency Department visits in the last few years is in INSURED patients, indicating that our system is broken and I don’t want to be forced to participate on the terms of the insurance companies, which Hillary takes a lot of money from.

Barack will start with kids–fine. Then we need to turn the debate back to true universal coverage, not subsidizing the hodge-podge we have now and increasing insurance company CEO profits. Actually, all candidates are only so-so on healthcare; but Hillary has no great advantage, IMHO. It’s not as if she actually has universal health care–just, let’s say, total coverage, which IS a difference.

A historian on Wisconsin Public Radio pointed out that almost all great public speakers were also great presidents–JFK, Roosevelt, Lincoln. Are there counter examples?

And it is a moment when I scratch my head and wonder what became of the much vaunted and envied team that Hillary had?

I can not for the life of me begin to fathom why they believe doubling down on a strategy that hasn’t worked–and amping up the rhetoric seems to do more to erode her position than enhance it is the way to go?

Insanity, as the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different outcome.

She’s been making the ready on day one, no need for on-job the training for months now.

Ditto for the best able to deal with the Republican attack machine riff.

And the public hasn’t been buying it.

In my own experience, people who aren’t interested in listening to what you have to say in a normal voice don’t become more receptive listeners when the message is the same but the volume is turned up to a scream.

And attempting to savage Obama–with what are basically the same old charges–is not going to create a compelling case for voting for Hillary.

Everywhere I go, everyone I talk to, leads me to believe that Americans are way past being hungry for an election in which the choice of candidates is one of the lesser of two evils.

One can never count out the strength and resources of the Billary Machine, but the question does arise, “How many ‘recastings’ of her campaign are possible, much less endurable by the elctorate?”

No matter how she tries to “spin” it, no matter how difficult it is for her and for her supporters to accept, the fact is that she is on the wrong side of the New Spirit that is sweeping the country in this election cycle. For her sake, for the sake of her husband’s legacy, for the sake of the Party, she really should just stop, now, and exit with some dignity and grace.

Obama has done an amazing job with his campaign. He proves that he is in control and can do this. Clinton isn’t going to woo Obama leaners to her side by getting ugly. Both he and she want this country to be better. Both would put their all into it. Let’s try to keep it positive, stick to issues, and not turn our own voters off.

As I stated on this blog several days ago, the White House is Obama’s to lose.

Barring the revelation of truly derogatory information on Obama, I’m among a growing number of Republicans and independents who will vote for Obama. My first choice was Ron Paul who regretably decided against making a independent run.

There are a lot of things I don’t like about the Democratic Party. Nevertheless we desperately need a totally new face and someone likely to end or severely scale back our financially ruinous failed military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Very funny, minutes ago I commented one blog down (hasn’t posted yet) that for the next two weeks Sen. Clinton would get more negative and strident. Bingo, off and running.

Her strategy here will fail. We the people are mostly entirely sick of the Bush years and we want a tremendous change in every way. Sen. Obama is describing how he could effect that change, while Sen. Clinton is now focussing on what’s wrong with Sen. Obama. Wrong tactic, we wanted to hear exactly how she’d change things (which she had been talking about before, when she was the front-runner).

After Texas and Ohio go for Sen. Obama, I hope Sen. Clinton sees the reality of the situation and bows out gracefully. We can’t tear the party to shreds and then turn around and win the general election three months later. The Republicans know this, that’s why they’re stirring up discord amongst Dems as much as possible.

I think she should have gone hard on Obama in the beginning of the campaign. I fear it’s too late since everyone seems to be riding the Obama wave. Hillary mismanaged her campaign and she’s paying the price for it.

However, I think after the Republican machine is done with Obama, he’ll be through. It stupefies me that Obama is complaining of Hillary attacks, when all she’s done is thrown soft balls. He doesn’t have the hard shell to survive the Republicans. I’m expecting at least 4 years of Repulican ascendency to presidency with McCain at the helm.

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